In October 30, 1988, the Sunday supplement of La Vanguardia (a major Spanish newspaper) published an article I had written, commemorating the 90th anniversary of the publication as a book of Herbert George Wells’s novel The War of the Worlds. (It had been published in instalments the previous year). That year also marked a half-century after Orson Welles’s radio adaptation of that novel, which caused panic in part of the United States, because many people didn’t realize it was an adaptation of a novel and thought that the Martians were invading Earth.
This year marks the 127th anniversary of the publication of this novel, perhaps the best-known of works of H.G. Wells. A generation after Jules Verne, Wells is the second great precursor of a literary genre (science fiction) that enjoyed enormous expansion in the 20th century. In light of this anniversary, I wonder: Why do these celebrations always take place when the number of years is a multiple of 25? Why can't the 127th anniversary be celebrated?
127 is a nice number. It’s prime, and equals 27-1.
It is, therefore, the fourth Mersenne
prime, after 3, 7, and 31. In total, only 52 Mersenne prime numbers are
known. Being the fourth of a set of just 52, among all known numbers, makes 127
an interesting number. In case anyone is interested, the 52nd Mersenne prime,
the largest currently known, is equal to 2136279841-1.
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| H.G. Wells |
Even more so than the novels by Jules Verne, whose
works are, above all, novels about travel and adventure, many of the novels by Wells
are pure science fiction. The best-known were published in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries and brought him fame, alleviating the chronic poverty that
nearly brought him to his grave. The first (1895) was The Time
Machine, one of
the earliest science fiction forays into the time travel subgenre.
Although he wrote science fiction for many years,
his best-known works date from the first six years of his literary career.
Besides the one I just mentioned, his most famous works are The Island
of Doctor Moreau
(1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898), and The First Men in the Moon (1901). His scientific predictions are often far
removed from the technology of his time, and many have not come true. It is
true that we have reached the moon, but we have not found the giant intelligent
ants that Wells claimed populate its subsoil.
Some of Wells’s predictions were more accurate.
Thus, in The War in the Air (1908), he described the aerial bombings that came
to happen during the Spanish Civil War and in the Second World War. And in
1913, in The World Set Free, he predicted the existence of chain reactions
that could be used to build explosive bombs of enormous power. Although Wells
made a huge mistake in this novel: he predicted in 1913 that the First World
War would start in 1956. But, as he himself said about it: [I have]
always been… a rather slow prophet. For more details, this is my review of
this book in Goodreads.
H.G. Wells’s greatest interest was not science
fiction. The scientific elements in his books are a pretext. What interests him
is the effect of unforeseen, abnormal situations on human beings, individually
or in society. As the action progresses, his novels tend to become essays in
experimental sociology. Over time, this tendency increased, leading him to
write less science fiction and more contemporary novels, partly
autobiographical, where he describes the clash of individuals with the norms
imposed by society.
Wells also wrote essays on the influence of science
on future society and the path he believed social evolution should follow.
Notable among them are Mankind in the making (1903), A Modern Utopia (1905), and especially The Outline
of History (1920),
which moved G.K. Chesterton to answer with his most famous work: The
Everlasting Man
(1925).
The image of the world presented by Wells in his
popular essays has become a myth: In
the beginning was emptiness and inanimate matter. Then, by an inconceivably
small chance, life arose on our planet, and biological evolution took over,
leading to the emergence of increasingly complex intelligent beings. Finally,
man emerged, who is learning to master his environment. In the future, the
continuation of this evolution will lead to the superman. But then the blind
forces of Nature will come into play, and the final triumph belongs to them.
The second law of thermodynamics will lead the cosmos to chaos and destruction,
putting an end to those demigods who for some time possessed the Earth. This myth hides some flaws, mixed with elements of
truth.
The plot of The War of the Worlds can be summarized as follows: Desperate because their
world is running out of water and air, Martians invade Earth. Their war machine
is easily successful. Fifty Martians are able to conquer much of England with
only three casualties, but are defeated by Earth’s putrefying bacteria, against
which they have no defenses.
In this, as in other science fiction works, our microbes affect the aliens, but
earthlings seem immune to microorganisms from other planets. This novel was one of the
first to describe an invasion of Earth by aliens.
The role of science in the novel is secondary.
Wells is interested in describing the collapse of a society proud of its
achievements in a distressing and irresistible situation. It is, therefore,
sociological science fiction. We must admit that Wells is right. We live in a
precarious situation, as the recent power outage in Spain demonstrated. As time
passes, we depend more on technological advances, so the threat of catastrophic
collapse grows rather than diminishes.
Today we know that the Martians will not come to
threaten us. There is no intelligent life outside of Earth in the solar system,
and it is very difficult for the inhabitants of other stars, if they exist, to
cross the immense void separating us. But let us not be complacent: we are
capable of destroying ourselves, without the need for aliens to come.
Thematic Thread on Literature and Cinema: Previous Next
Manuel Alfonseca
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